Coach Jamie Moore has hailed the performance of Carl Frampton on Saturday night and sent a warning to the rest of the featherweight division that the Belfast man has so much more to give in 2018.

Former World super-bantamweight and featherweight champion Frampton outpointed Mexican hard man Horacio Garcia at the SSE Arena over 10 entertaining rounds but Moore knows that the Jackal needs to move up a level if he is to rule the nine stone division once more.

While he admitted there were flaws in Frampton's display, he is adamant that was largely down to the 10 months the 30-year-old Belfast man spent on the sidelines since his World title defeat at the hands of Leo Santa Cruz.

"I think Carl deserves massive credit for the performance he has put in on the back of the amount of stress he has been under," said Moore.

"People don't realise what he has had to deal with behind the scenes. It's a mark of his character to come here and put on a show after all he has been through, honestly it's horrendous.

"That was a six out of 10 by his standards. He can box 10 times better than that, if he sticks to the plan and boxes and if the rest of the featherweights think that's him at his best then they're going to get a shock."

Moore has returned to Manchester having learned more about the Jackal following their first fight together and what he feels needs to be worked on ahead of a World title fight at Windsor Park next summer.

"I found out a little bit about his character in that he likes to have a scrap more than I expected. When he used the jab nice and snappy, he bossed it from the outside. He was working on things that we had worked on in the gym, when he was on the ropes he allowed himself to stay there too long," added Moore.

"Once Garcia landed a few shots he then started trading with him whereas he should have gone back to what he had been doing before. But these things take time, they won't just happen overnight.

"It's a good thing that we saw some things in this fight that we can go back to the gym and work on. We can show him a certain situation in the fight and where he went wrong and what he needs to do the next time.

"Rome wasn't built in a day and I've said so many times that Carl is the finished article in that I'm not going to show him how to throw a jab better, he's far beyond that stage - it's about getting him to use his attributes at the right time and sometimes he didn't do that. He did some lovely things early on and then allowed himself to get dragged into a fight and that's a temperament thing.

"He has to learn to control it but a big part of that was everything that happened in the summer, the fight falling through, he felt like he owed it to the fans to put on a show. He was loading up too much because of that but when he relaxed he was fine."